The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick

by Harrison, Shirley

  So when Paul Feldman’s team discovered, in 1996, a hitherto unremarkable letter in the Scotland Yard files — from Galashiels in Scotland — there was a feeling of great excitement. The letter itself was dramatic.

  Dear Boss,

  I have to thank you and my brother in trade, Jack the Ripper for your kindness in letting me away out of Whitechapel.

  I am now on my road to the tweed Factories I will let the Innerleithen Constable or Police men know when I am about to start my nice Little game. I have got my knife replenished so it will answer both for ladies and gents other tweed ones and I have won my wager.

  I am yours

  truly

  The Ripper.

  Innerleithen was then a small border town, famous for its tweed making. Some forms of inferior tweed were, in those days, made with a blend of cotton. The cotton merchants of Liverpool were therefore frequent visitors to the area. More than this, the handwriting of the Galashiels letter bears a striking likeness to that in a letter written by James Maybrick. This was found by Paul Feldman in America and was penned aboard The Baltic in March 1881. This letter in turn is also, to my mind, not unlike the hand that wrote the Diary. The jury is out.

  The conflicting opinions are bemusing. There appears, to my untrained eye, a clear relationship between the Galashiels letter and Maybrick’s will. Bill Waddell, former curator of the Scotland Yard Black Museum, has a lifetime’s experience of forgery and is convinced they are one and the same.

  In 1993, as a result of her interest in the Diary, Sue presented a paper on Jack the Ripper to the World Association of Document Examiners at a conference in Chicago. She confirmed to delegates that she was in no doubt that the Diary had not been written by James Maybrick and that he did not write the Dear Boss letters. She was herself in the process of researching the handwriting of the historical letters and that in time she hoped the result would be a book in which the true identity of the Ripper would be revealed!

  As I was preparing copy for this new edition I came across confirmation of my doubts about handwriting analysis from a most unexpected — and welcome — source. Former policeman, Donald Rumbelow, no less, had written in the 1988 edition of his much respected book The Complete Jack the Ripper:

  …very little reliance can be placed on handwriting comparison. The handwriting of the German murderer, Peter Kurten, who was known as the Dusseldorf Ripper because of the way he imitated his notorious predecessor, changed completely after each murder, so much so, indeed, that he used to point out to his wife the anonymous letters that he wrote to the police and which were reproduced in the newspapers, so confident was he that she would never recognise them — nor did she…

  * * *

  THE ASTROLOGICAL EVIDENCE

  At this stage we were presented with some material from an unexpected source. It was a report which pulled us all up with a jerk. Nicholas Campion is President of the British Astrological Association and when he heard about the Diary he offered to prepare a chart on James Maybrick. I was curious, although wary of the scorn that I knew could be poured on such projections. I include Nicholas’ report, not as evidence but out of interest — for the many readers (including some world leaders) who do set store by astrology.

  Like Anna Koren, he had read none of the books on James Maybrick or on Florie’s trial and knew as little about the Ripper. He prefaced his profile with an insistence that astrology should never be used to pinpoint guilt in the absence of other evidence. ‘I am always very alarmed by amateur astrologers who go around accusing people of something purely on the basis of their charts.’ But it cannot be ignored that, despite living thousands of miles apart, Anna and he produced almost identical profiles. This is the report of Nicholas Campion:

  James Maybrick was born in Liverpool on October 24 1838 with the Sun in Scorpio, an intense and secretive sign and the Moon in Capricorn, indicating broadly conservative tendencies. Unfortunately we have no record of his time of birth and we are therefore unable to calculate Maybrick’s rising sign. So, although we can tell a certain amount about Maybrick’s character we are lacking much important information which could tell us, for certain, if Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. However we still have much valuable information.

  Venus and Mercury together in Libra tell us that Maybrick was capable of being extremely charming, and was able to hide his deeper feelings behind a perfectly acceptable public face. We may even imagine him having his dandyish side, although within the respect for formal manners appropriate to the Moon in Capricorn and the reserve typical of the Sun in Scorpio.

  As Maybrick is suspected of committing some of the most gruesome ever sexual murders, it makes sense to examine planets of sexual attraction, Venus and Mars. Intriguingly, both are making powerful alignments, Mars is in a square (a 90 degree angle with Saturn), indicating the threat of violence. However, this alignment alone is not sufficiently powerful to suggest that Maybrick was a perpetrator of violent crimes.

  Venus, however, is very striking, being in a tight opposition (a 180 degree alignment) with Pluto. Venus is the symbol of the maiden, while Pluto, in classical mythology was the underworld god who abducted Persephone, a goddess closely associated with Venus. There could be no more powerful evocation than this of the Ripper myth within Maybrick’s horoscope, and here we find one of the key astrological symbols of sexual violence. It is well worth quoting extensively on the matter from The Astrology of Fate by the Jungian analyst, Liz Greene. Dr. Greene writes that:

  ‘Whenever the myth protrays his (Pluto’s) entry into the upper world, he is shown persistently acting out one scenario: rape … Its (Pluto’s) intrusion into consciousness feels like a violation, and we, like Persephone, the maiden of the myth, are powerless to resist. Where Pluto is encountered there is often a sense of violent penetration, unwished for yet unavoidable.’

  Later, Dr. Greene discusses the psychological complexes indicated by the astrological alignment of Venus and Pluto at birth. These offer a fascinating insight into Maybrick’s personality and the pressures which may have compelled him towards his violent actions. Describing Pluto as the ‘destroyer rapist’, she discusses the dilemmas which occur when it brings its emotional power to the subtle femininity represented by Venus:

  ‘Something or someone is trying to dismember the very thing one values and cherishes the most … Here fate often intrudes upon love, frequently in the form of an obsessive sexual passion or the breakdown of the sexual relationship between two people.’ [My italics.]

  The psychological complex represented by Venus and Pluto indicates and individual who cannot tolerate imperfection. If the object of their desire is found to be flawed, there is only one option: to destroy it. Maybrick may have believed that women were essentially ideal and perfect creatures, in effect, goddesses. It is not impossible that, when confronted with the reality of ordinary flesh and blood mortals he reacted by recreating his own version of the underworld, taking to the dark, narrow streets of Whitechapel and committing there the most horrible murders.

  The essence of any astrological investigation is timing, and if Maybrick is to be accused of the Ripper murders it is necessary that his Mars–Saturn and Venus–Pluto alignments were themselves powerfully aspected by the planets on the night of the first murder. The Ripper’s first victim, Mary Ann Nichols, was murdered at 3.00am on August 31 1888. Intriguingly, at this moment, Maybrick’s Mars–Saturn alignment was indeed extremely powerfully aspected.

  Maybrick’s Venus–Pluto alignment was strongly connected with Uranus. Uranus destabilises already uncertain situations and is closely associated with erratic and uncontrollable events. We may therefore conclude that Maybrick’s psychological obsession with death and sexual initiation was likely to be expressed in a shocking manner. Combine this with the violence of his Mars–Saturn alignment and we have powerful evidence that, on the night of Mary Ann Nichols’ murder, Maybrick was poised to commit a violent act. The circumstantial evidence of the horoscopes for his birth and the first
murder offer powerful testimony in support of Maybrick’s guilt.

  There was one other important alignment at Nichols’ murder which, at first sight, bore little relationship to Maybrick’s horoscope. This was a 90 degeree square alignment between the Moon at 25 degrees in Gemini and Venus at 22 degrees in Virgo. Psychologically this pattern is indicative of extremely unstable emotions, bordering on hysteria. However, both Gemini and Virgo are analytical signs which find it difficult to express feelings. They are most likely to conceive a practical and apparently rational plan via which pent up emotions may be expressed. Symbolically, Venus in Virgo represents the maiden, while the Moon represents the mother, both the female planets. The alignment between them was separating, and therefore growing weaker, but would have been exact around 9.00pm on the previous evening, perhaps around the time when the Ripper was preparing his first murder.

  Whether Maybrick was the Ripper or not, his horoscope repeatedly describes psychological complexes appropriate to the Ripper.

  Yet the strangest coincidences occur when we enter the realms of metaphysical speculation for it’s here that we begin to come closest to the undying mythology of the Ripper, the ultimate male murderer of women. From a 20th century perspective Jack the Ripper is no longer a flesh and blood man but larger than large, a being of demonic myth, capable still of inspiring fascination and fear.

  It is particularly strange then that the significant violent alignments in Maybrick’s horoscope recurred on October 30 1975, the date of the first murder committed by Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. We find a number of planetary coincidences. For example, on the date of Sutcliffe’s first murder Venus and Mars were both repeating the positions they occupied in Maybrick’s horoscope at Nichols’ murder.

  This is a truly astonishing coincidence, as if Maybrick’s horoscope were that not only for the first Ripper but for the second. It is almost as if the spirit of the Ripper was alive in Sutcliffe when he savaged his victims. Perhaps, to take a different approach, both Sutcliffe and Maybrick were locked into the same psychological archetype via common astrological configurations. If Maybrick was not the original Ripper, he certainly possessed a sufficient streak of viciousness to have committed acts of violence against women. It is also an interesting fact that the sun at Maybrick’s birth occupied exactly the degree of the zodiac to that occupied by Hitler’s Sun. This is not in itself unusual, although the coincidence develops if we cast Maybrick’s horoscope for noon, which is the custom in cases of uncertain birth time. In this case, we find that the moon occupied the same degree of the zodiac as at Hitler’s birth. At Nichols’ murder, Saturn, considered by ancient astrologers the most unfortunate of all possible influences, had reached exactly the same degree of the zodiac as that which it occupied at Hitler’s birth. Such coincidences do not tell us that Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. They do suggest however, that there may be a common mythology of evil, indicated by certain identical planetary positions which connected the Ripper murders to Hitler’s holocaust.

  This connection between the serial killer and the mass murderer offers a symbolic clue that we are on the right track in our suspicions that James Maybrick may have been Jack the Ripper.

  Maybrick’s horoscope confirms that he may, reasonably, be considered a prime suspect.

  As if this were not in itself an extraordinary report I also spoke with a Sussex author and astrologer of long experience — John Astrop. John specialised in criminal astrology and had a huge library of associated horoscopes. He had written Florence Maybrick’s some years ago and sent it to me. Summarising his report, he concluded:

  The attraction factor between them both (Florence and James) would have been immediate and impulsive… it would have been a compulsive but uncomfortable relationship when they were not showing a dignified face to the world… She would have been a person who could easily believe her own lies. He would have been emotionally manipulative and a bully… Scorpios are traditionally the worst sign to battle against — they always play dirty.

  * * *

  THE PSYCHOLOGY

  In 1993, Paul Feldman and scriptwriter/author Martin Howells, who were working on the video of my book, called a meeting which was attended by Paul Begg, Sally Evemy, Martin Fido, Don Rumbelow, Keith Skinner, Robert Smith and Bill Waddell, former curator of Scotland Yard’s Black Museum. Special guest was Dr David Canter, then a professor at Surrey University but now professor of Psychology at Liverpool University and Britain’s leading specialist in psychological profiling.

  In 1994, Professor Canter wrote Criminal Shadows, in which the ‘psychological traces surrounding the crime, the tell tale patterns of behaviour indicate the personality of the offender right down to his hobbies, job and address… these subtle and ambiguous shadows lead to an understanding of the serial killer’s mind and ultimately to an “inner narrative” that exposes the identity of the criminal.’

  Professor Canter expressed, with authority, many of my own instincts about the Diary. He was impressed with the subtle banality and creative weaving. Serial killers do, he said, write about themselves in such a banal way, and their preoccupations are amazingly trivial to anyone else. They want to re-enact and enjoy what they have done and to publicise their deeds.

  ‘This is not really a Diary at all,’ he told me. ‘It’s more of a log of things significant to him and as such I would expect to find inconsistencies. It would be much more likely to be a forgery were it perfect and completely without flaws. I was worried about the end at first — it is a bit too stage-managed but on the other hand the wrapping up of a life is typical of a man who knows he is dying.’

  Professor Canter was particularly interested to see that the Diary demonstrates what Freud was later to call ‘displacement activity’ — that is, for example, using Whitechapel in London instead of Whitechapel in Liverpool as his base and the way in which feelings of passionate jealousy of his wife are lived out through Mary Jane Kelly, in particular. His movements in Whitechapel, too, fit the map that Professor Canter has devised to plot the movements of a number of serial killers — marking what he calls ‘the point of fatal encounter’ — in relation to places of residence. Maybrick fits the pattern; his first London killing was at the farthest point away from Middlesex Street and as he kills so he moves nearer and nearer to ‘home.’

  Professor Canter does not dismiss the Diary. For him it is most likely to be either a modern forgery making use of Freudian techniques — or it is real, using these techniques naturally, from experience and not as an intellectual exercise. But if it is a modern forgery then, he claims, the forgers must be extremely sophisticated, with a wide knowledge of the physical, psychological and medical characteristics of a serial killer. He commented to me in a recent letter that ‘the only people who could have forged it must come from within the world of Ripperology.’

  But I knew that before Michael Barrett showed the Diary to Doreen Montgomery and me in 1992 no present day Ripperologists knew of the existence of the Diary.

  Piece by piece our jigsaw profile of the Ripper was appearing compatible with what we knew of Maybrick. He was a child-loving, genial host of a man, particular about his appearance and anxious to improve his status in society. William Stead, the journalist, wrote later, ‘Friends would say Maybrick was a very good kind of fellow’. Indeed, when Maybrick’s business colleague and friend wrote to the Home Secretary in 1889, he proclaimed, ‘I can state that I have known Mr Maybrick for more than 25 years on the most intimate terms as an exceedingly good natured, amiable and generous nature, who, tho’ after his marriage did not lead a happy life at home, was always trying to take a generous view of his wife’s shortcomings and was devotedly fond of his children…’

  But behind the well-groomed facade there was a darker side. Rumours were spread during Florie’s trial that he had killed his neighbour’s dogs; there was the strange packet marked ‘poison for cats’ and the known outbursts of violent temper resulting in blows.

  David Forshaw, like Profe
ssor Canter, has a special interest in the mind of the serial killer and has kept closely in touch with developments on the Diary throughout the life of my book. I met him first at Maudsley Hospital and later, in 1997, at Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane, now the home of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.

  Dr Forshaw offered to study the Diary and report on the mind of the man who wrote it. He was not asked ‘Is the writer of this Diary, Jack the Ripper?’ His report had two aims:

  1. To explain the psychopathology of serial killers alongside what is known about Jack the Ripper.

  2. To compare the above findings with the psychopathology of the Diary.

  The Jack the Ripper Diary represents the serial recording of the Ripper’s thoughts or feelings, or more accurately, his expressing and working through his emotional and intellectual turmoil. It is an integral part of his psychopathology.

  Of course, the Whitechapel murders were not the first serial killings. Such crimes have occurred throughout history. There are recorded cases of serial killings dating back to classical times. In fact, in their book Perverse Crimes in History, Masters and Lea describe a plague of stabbers and rippers in the 19th century that reached a peak in the 1880s and 1890s. So, Jack the Ripper, monster that he was, was one among many. He might have been just another murderer were it not for the self-determined nick-name.